


Not in Sussex Downs

by A_Strange_Vessel



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU of an AU?, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Childhood Friends, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mostly Disregard Season 3, Mostly Disregard Season 4, Mostly Disregard The Abominable Bride, POV Sherlock Holmes, Post-Season/Series 02 AU, Rating May Change, References to Non-Present Canon Characters, Spoilers for The Shattered Medallion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-06-24
Packaged: 2018-09-18 12:17:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 3,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9384665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Strange_Vessel/pseuds/A_Strange_Vessel
Summary: Commissioned by AO3 user Hobbit4Lyfe as an AU of her fics Sherlock's Journal and The Sherlock Letters, where Sherlock never returns to London, choosing to live exclusively with the OC(s) in the aforementioned fics (meaning that, with few exceptions, seasons 3 and 4, as well as TAB, don't exist in this AU).As with the AU set up by Hobbit4Lyfe, there will be references to some other fandoms, but I'm still debating whether or not to actually tag this as a crossover.





	1. Nobody Expected It of Me (Part 1)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hobbit4Lyfe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hobbit4Lyfe/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Sherlock's Journal](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5182943) by [Hobbit4Lyfe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hobbit4Lyfe/pseuds/Hobbit4Lyfe). 
  * Inspired by [The Sherlock Letters](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5838157) by [Hobbit4Lyfe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hobbit4Lyfe/pseuds/Hobbit4Lyfe). 



In 2012, and into 2013, I traveled the world to dismantle Jim Moriarty's crime web. In spring of 2013, around April, I think, or maybe early May (I lost track of time for a while), I finally succeed.

The spider was dead; I had burned his web down.

My brother Mycroft urged me to return to London, but... I refused. Strange of me to not return to my home city and solve crimes, to reunite with John Watson, my best friend of two years (to him; three years to me). Technically, I'd originally planned to go home, but... Things changed.

I'd decided to return to America, to a part of Northern Virginia, not far from the country's Capitol of Washington, DC. While in the area in January of that same year, I'd seen someone I thought I knew.

He hadn't seen me then, but that spring, instead of returning to London, I'd paid a visit to see that man.

Godric knew me as the consulting detective, but it took him several more meetings until, in early June, he remembered.

He remembered that 25 years earlier, I'd spent the summer in the suburbs of Philadelphia, learning the violin from his grandmother, while he and his two brothers also stayed with us. He remembered that he was the first person to consider me a friend, even though we'd lost contact after we'd both graduated school (he, as well as his brothers, graduated three years after I did).

Yes, it seems quite unbelievable, but I did have friends before I met John.


	2. Backtracking

The summer I met Godric, 25 years ago, I learned that Mycroft was technically my half-brother (and the sister we'd rather not mention was technically my half-sister).

My psychologist mother, who did her residency in California for some reason I'd rather not know, ended up having an affair with one of her patients. I still don't know how she got away with it while still in California. Eventually, the man I've always considered my father ended up suspecting at least a little bit and could no longer deal with the knowledge. The divorce proceedings were why I was sent to America for the summer leading up to the year I'd be shipped off to boarding school back in England. (Ironically, Godric's grandmother had dual citizenship, and she'd also become one of my teachers there at the boarding school.)

The night (in July) I stayed up late to sneak and watch Alfred Hitchcock movies I'd never been allowed to watch at home is when I started making the connections that I'd actually been the product of an affair.

I didn't care about the differences between time zones; I'd phoned Mycroft at uni, and he said he'd known for years. I didn't believe him when he said he'd been sworn into secrecy to protect me. It was because of that conversation that I lost faith in my brother for years. And it's the reason that, since the invention of mobile phones, I prefer text messages to actual phone conversations.

(The fact that my biological father had been in and out of mental hospitals for a good portion of his adult life is why I hate being called a freak or a psychopath, more so than because my sister is in one herself.)

That night, I tried nursing my broken heart on my own but failed. Godric heard on his way back to his room from the loo, and he came into my guest room and calmed me down. I'd trusted him enough to tell him, and only him, everything that had happened earlier that night. Even after I'd calmed myself, I asked him to stay, and he did. That was the night that he'd told me he thought of me as a friend.

At the time, I didn't know what to really call the things I'd felt for Godric that summer. I do now, and I still feel the same way, after 25 years.

The childish crush I'd developed when we'd met at the end of June, 1988, developed into love by July.

I know John thinks that love confuses me. He's not wrong about the idea of love confusing me, but he's wrong. As with most people, he assumes it's because of The Woman.

Of course, the whole feud with Mycroft is part of my confusion regarding, or supposed aversion to, love. The brunt of it is because of my mother.

After my parents' divorce, my mother returned to California and stupidly married my biological father, who'd been released from the mental hospital in 1989. My younger brother was born in November of 1990. My mother's second marriage ended in 1991, when her husband was supposed to have died. My younger brother was put up for adoption when he was only a few months old, lucky to not know of any of what happened. I still don't know why the man I always knew as my father ended up remarrying my mother in 1992, after forgiving her for the mess she'd caused.

But I want to learn to understand love. I want to learn from Godric. As I said, I still love him.


	3. Nobody Expected It of Me (Part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure how many more chapters I'll have parallel the fics by Hobbit4Lyfe, but when I do get to having my Sherlock AU separate from hers, I'll make a note of it.

June 22, 2013: A night I'll not soon delete from my mind palace.

For the past month, I've been renting a "townhouse" less than a mile from where Godric lives, having Mrs Hudson slowly ship some of my belongings from my old flat to here. I've been volunteering at a local library with him.

But it's only tonight that I'm seriously considering at least attempting to completely settle down, regardless of what I told Mycroft the last time we talked.

Godric had been showing me places around town the past two or three days, since he'd finally managed to get time off work. Tonight, he'd finally come over to visit me in my new home.

I finally admitted that I'm in love with him. I also admitted that even before Godric married the girl he'd met when he and his brothers were also sent to my old boarding school, the idea of losing him to her is what drove me into depression, envy, and drug use. I sometimes would claim to relapse "to think on cases," but while that's occasionally true, most of my relapses were unintentional.

I started rambling about how deeply I am in love with Godric, so he kissed me to shut me up. It must've had that dropped-jaw, gaping fish look John gets whenever my deductions are right.

He told me that last night, after he'd gotten home from running around town with me, his wife, Clara, had wormed it out of him that he's bisexual. He'd wanted to come out to her for months, but couldn't find the right time. She's alright with it, and the two of them agreed to an open relationship.

He'd decided he wanted me to be his lover. And tonight was the first night we'd had sex, the first night he's wanted to stay the night with me.

I... Yes, our first time was a bit awkward, but I'm ecstatic that I've finally won Godric over... Even given the circumstances.

It will take him time to really adjust to his sexuality, given that he's only really seriously considered the fact that he isn't straight for a matter of months.

But I'm still glad that Godric and I are lovers.

I know I'll miss John, since I did grow fond of him the two years we stayed together in 221B Baker Street. Now, though, I feel I really do have a reason to stay here in America.


	4. A Thought

I know I'm attempting to settle down, at least for a while, but eventually I'll want to find something to excite me. I'm not the type to stay still for long. (If I do, I may succumb to another drug relapse.)

For the time being, though, I think I'll professionally call myself William Holmes and still go by Sherlock outside of work. Not many people know that William is my given name, so it could be interesting to pass myself off as a nonexistent twin.


	5. An August Wedding

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is the only season 3 AU chapter I know for sure I'm writing here in "Not Sussex Downs."
> 
> The next one, maybe two, will be a return to the parallels to what Hobbit4Lyfe has written in her stories that inspired this one.
> 
> After that, I'll probably be going into the AU of what Hobbit4Lyfe currently has written for her two Sherlock stories.

I couldn't help but look John up on the Internet to see what he's been doing since I left him. This stemmed from a habit I formed while trying to hunt down Moriarty's web, back when I thought I'd be returning to London when I was done.

I know I said I was wrong about how I was going to return to London to see John again, and how I decided to attempt to settle down for a while. And during the time I thought I was going to return to London, I deluded myself into thinking that John would just sit around and wait for me.

I was wrong about that, too.

John ended up marrying a woman called Mary Morstan. I would have hoped to have been the best man, had I returned to my homeland. Instead, John ended up choosing Mike Stamford, his old med school acquaintance who introduced me to John.

I'm debating whether to anonymously send the newlyweds a belated congratulations (with the possibility that John will know I sent it) or to continue to let John think I'm dead.


	6. Fast-Foward

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize in advance for the random Nancy Drew game spoilers in this chapter.

May 2014. New Zealand.

Godric, Clara, and I were chosen to be a team on the reality TV show Pacific Run. It's something like that Amazing Race show that used to be on American telly.

(I hope that, should he watch the show, John will be fooled into the idea that I'm still posing as my nonexistent twin. Or that he's deluding himself into seeing who he thinks is his dead friend.)

This may be the final run for this competition.

There was always something off about the show's new producer. He'd hijacked the show, delayed the arrival of essentially the entire production team, swapped out the original set of teams, and chose his own cast.

Weirder than the fact that the other teams of two were chosen by this odd man called Sonny Joon for his own purposes was that I was on a four-person team with not just my lover and his wife, but also their ten-year-old son, Taran. Who in their right mind would let a child into this?

Just after 5:00 in the evening, local time, "Team Extra" (we were dubbed) was heading to a lake to solve a puzzle when shots were heard, coming from a sniper in the surrounding woods.

Clara had been hit in the chest. The show's medics (people whom Sonny managed not to delay) couldn't save her.

It turned out that the shooter was one of the other contestants, a Maori woman called Kiri Nind. She'd been the one to sabotage other teams, injuring contestants (even including her own teammate), for her own selfish means.

Clara had died having forgiven Godric for asking for an open relationship from its beginning, and her final request was that he remain in a happy relationship with me.

It was traumatic for both Godric and his son to witness Clara's passing; Godric had just lost his first love, and Taran had just lost his mother.


	7. After Two Weeks

Godric would be the first one to admit that continuing our relationship so soon after being widowed isn't the wisest idea; we'd be the first two suspects in Clara's murder. But Kiri did admit to shooting Clara as one of her attempts to take out the competition in Pacific Run. (Kiri would've come in second, had she not murdered Clara, caused two women to fall from a bridge and invalid out of the competition, and attempt to murder one other contestant and the show's producer.)

But we were both in the clear regarding the murder.

Let me backtrack a moment. Apparently, some time before the murder, Godric and Clara had been considering an amicable divorce. They were both torn about staying married as well as having lovers; they may not have been in romantic love anymore, but there was still some sort of love between them. Given they had a child together, the two of them still at least considered each other sort of family. Taran wasn't completely clueless as to what was going on, and had even once privately said to Godric that he'd like to have me as a stepfather.

A surprisingly short two weeks after his wife's murder, Godric proposed to me. He'd done it at the library where we'd both been volunteering at the start of our relationship.

I was as shocked as I was that night just short of a year before when he'd first kissed me. I still accepted.

Later that night, Godric admitted that even he was surprised by his decision to propose so soon. He initially wanted to wait to grieve a bit longer, but the decision was a split second thing.

He'd said even when Clara was alive, and they were planning to divorce, he knew he'd wanted to stay with me. But proposing so soon after her death was a split second decision, as he'd said, because he was scared and confused, and he didn't want to be alone.

I'd told him I completely understood the feeling; it was what I was thinking when he'd first come in to calm me the night I'd found out about my parents.


	8. A New Start (Part 1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this chapter and the next one are considered the start of my AU of the Hobbit4Lyfe stories she's asked me to "rewrite," with possible vague spoilers/parallels for upcoming plot points regarding the Sherlock/OC wedding subplot in her stories.
> 
> So, I guess start considering this the start of the AU of Hobbit4Lyfe's AU?

July 2014. Godric, Taran, and I have moved from Northern Virginia to Godric's hometown of Sleepy Hollow, New York. We're now living in Godric's childhood home. He'd taken ownership of it from his parents, and my future in-laws have downsized to a smaller place as empty nesters. Godric and I have taken jobs at the local high school and will start in the fall.

Yes, part of the decision to move to Sleepy Hollow is to get Taran closer to his grandparents. The other part is that Godric is a bit worried that Taran's grief over his mother's death is more along the lines of serious emotional trauma from bearing witness to the murder at such a young age.

It turns out that Godric has this cousin Mike, who lives not too far away and is a child psychologist. He's hoping that his cousin can help Taran.


	9. A New Start (Part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize in advance for the chapter going on a random tangent near the end, but I'm trying to set up for this AU of Hobbit4Lyfe's Sherlock AU to go at least one of a couple possible ways.

January 8th, 2015. Tonight was both the most terrifying and the most wonderful night of my life.

When I say it's the most terrifying, I even compare it to the Baskerville case. I knew that letting my nerves take over, relapsing less than an hour before my wedding, and considering having cold feet was a terrible move, but I still hid out in the church bathroom.

Apparently, the couple isn't supposed to meet with each other the day of the wedding until it actually happens, but Godric slipped into the stall next to me just before I started using again. Once the two of us got to talking, I was able to calm down enough to prevent another relapse. It turns out he was as terrified as I was, enough to run into the loo because it made him feel ill.

Was it the fact that I'd realised pre-wedding jitters are a "normal" thing that caused me to not relapse again, or was it love? I swear, this sort of thing only happens in stories, like those romance novels I know Molly sometimes left around the morgue. Not that I ever actually read them (or that I'll admit to it out loud).

The wedding went better than I expected, though there were no threats to anyone's safety (unless you consider my near relapse). Normally, I'd consider that last bit to be boring, but I'm actually glad that my new husband and stepson are safe.

I was a bit disappointed I couldn't invite anyone I care about from England to my wedding, but in a way, it's better that most of them still believe I'm dead.

The wedding itself was small, as was the reception. Godric's two brothers acted as witnesses, and Taran was the ring bearer. Only Godric's side of the family was there at both the wedding and reception.

Godric and I both love the song "All Eyes on You" by St. Lucia, enough to originally want to use it for our dance tonight, but at the last moment, Godric suggested we change it to "Stay" by Emmy Rossum. I'm glad to have trusted his judgement, because it ended up being a more beautiful song. For the final dance, we had "All Eyes on You" lead into "Can't Take It In" by Imogen Heap.

Later in the night, after Godric, Taran, and I went home, my husband and I consummated our marriage. Yes, we'd had sex before, but it was somehow sweeter knowing that he'll be mine forever.

Because of our work schedules at the school, we thought it best to postpone our honeymoon until June.

Now I lay here, staring at the ceiling, with Godric cuddling up against me. I feel his bare skin against mine. His breathing has slowed, and both our hearts have slowed to match. He shifts slightly, so I try to pull the blankets a bit further up so he doesn't get cold. I know he's sleeping, and I've always seen him as more beautiful than usual when asleep, naked, and vulnerable like this.

Shit, am I getting soft because I'm in love? No. I'd like to think not. I know Mycroft has told me that caring is not an advantage, but the stone face I've developed over the years is just a front. Having Godric return to my life has broken down the stone.

I've probably said it before. As I try to fall asleep myself, I can't help but think that while I've enjoyed settling down with Godric these past couple years, I also can't help but think that I'm not really the settling down type. And I've always remembered Godric being the same way.

But given that we've decided to live in Sleepy Hollow, I wonder how long it'll take for things to get exciting around here. Yes, Washington Irving is a local favourite, but, after years of training myself to be rational, I'd been rather skeptical of supernatural happenings in the area.

I say I had been skeptical, but that was before Godric said that, as children, he and his brothers had seen the real Headless Horseman before, out in the woods behind this house. His own father had, too, once.

Of course, I'd tried to rationalise what he was telling me. I'd said it must've been someone in a Halloween costume. He'd shot back that each of the three times, it was late August. The man was on a dark horse. And what he'd worn seemed, to Godric, much more historically accurate than any of the Halloween costumes that are so popular in town.

And all three times, Godric had been close enough to see that the Horseman's wound was real.

I know this is nothing to consider on my wedding night, and I should be enjoying the calm of my new life, but things may soon get exciting indeed.


	10. A Child

Irene Adler wasn't killed by terrorists. That was just a cover Mycroft gave when helping her get into the Witness Protection Program here in America. (He wasn't lying to John when he'd mentioned Irene going to America; it was a bit like trying to play that two truths and a lie game to try to confuse John.)

Mycroft also got some of his connections in the American government to pull a few strings in letting me see her occasionally. We have a son together, Hamish, who was born in August of 2011. Irene has primary custody of him, and Godric and I get custody the final weekend of every month. Irene brings him down from their home a few hours upstate.

I think Hamish and Taran are happy to be brothers, though they don't get to see each other often.


	11. Wings and Memories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, look. Another parallel to a mix of current and future chapters of Hobbit4Lyfe's version of this AU that I forgot to bring up earlier.
> 
> I'm only bringing this up now to tie it into the one possible plot line I'm going for in this AU.

In the years I'd lost contact with my husband, I'd always remembered Godric as an angel. I'd then chalk the memories up to some drug-induced fantasy.

I usually use contact lenses when in public.

This fact is important because the first time I met Godric at his grandparents' home as a boy, he'd waited on the floor outside the closed door to the room where I'd had my violin lesson the day he and his brothers arrived. After the lesson concluded, I wasn't paying attention to where I was walking and accidentally tripped over Godric, falling over and knocking my glasses off.

He apologised profusely, helping me sit up and put my glasses back on. Yes, I'd come to love Godric's kindness and humour, but the first things I physically noticed about him were his unusual blue eyes, his adorable smile... And his huge raven-like wings.

The night Godric had comforted me, I could've sworn that, in addition to holding me in his arms as we'd talked to each other until we fell asleep, he'd wrapped his wings around me like a blanket. In the morning, I'd taken one of the shiny, scarlet-tipped, black feathers to remind me of how much I love Godric. (It broke my heart that I'd ended up losing that feather during my drug days, causing me to think that it was just something I'd imagined while high.)

I didn't bring them up that summer due to the fact I was afraid that I'd been wrong. At the time, I felt like the only one to see them.

Once I was reunited with Godric in 2013, his wings were still there. And it still seemed like nobody else knew he had them.

It's been two months since Godric and I got married, and I've only just asked about his wings, and whether or not I'd imagined them.

They are real; I am married to an angel. The only reason I can regularly see them as a human is that we're supposed to be soulmates.

What he didn't explain was why he's got three pairs of wings, or how his angelic nature relates to the Headless Horseman.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to save the angel soulmate AU for Broken Wings and keep it out of this story, but, again, couldn't help but use that particular parallel to future chapters of Hobbit4Lyfe's AU due to the possible relevance to my own possible plot lines.


End file.
